ustration of his schemes (for, strange to say, he
would have been much bolder, if they had succeeded); the unseasonable
time; the recollection of having no one near to whom he could appeal for
any friendly office; above all, the sudden sense, which made even his
heart beat like lead, that the man whose confidence he had outraged,
and whom he had so treacherously deceived, was there to recognise and
challenge him with his mask plucked off his face; struck a panic through
him. He tried the door in which the veil was shut, but couldn't force
it. He opened one of the windows, and looked down through the lattice of
the blind, into the court-yard; but it was a high leap, and the stones
were pitiless.

The ringing and knocking still continuing--his panic too--he went back
to the door in the bed-chamber, and with some new efforts, each more
stubborn than the last, wrenched it open. Seeing the little staircase
not far off, and feeling the night-air coming up, he stole back for his
hat and coat, made the door as secure after hIm as he could, crept down
lamp in hand, extinguished it on seeing the street, and having put it in
a corner, went out where the stars were shining.

CHAPTER 55. Rob the Grinder loses his Place

The Porter at the iron gate which shut the court-yard from the street,
had left the little wicket of his house open, and was gone away; no
doubt to mingle in the distant noise at the door of the great staircase.
Lifting the latch softly, Carker crept out, and shutting the jangling
gate after him with as little noise as possible, hurried off.

In the fever of his mortification and unavailing rage, the panic that
had seized upon him mastered him completely. It rose to such a height
that he would have blindly encountered almost any risk, rather than
meet the man of whom, two hours ago, he had been utterly regardless.
His fierce arrival, which he had never expected; the sound of his voice;
their having been so near a meeting, face to face; he would have braved
out this, after the first momentary shock of alarm, and would have put
as bold a front upon his guilt as any villain. But the springing of his
mine upon himself, seemed to have rent and shivered all his hardihood
and self-reliance. Spurned like any reptile; entrapped and mocked;
turned upon, and trodden down by the proud woman whose mind he had
slowly poisoned, as he thought, until she had sunk into the mere
creature of his pleasure; undeceived in his dece